PowerColor X850 XT Overheating Warning

[Swiftan]

Heya.

For a while now I've been getting system beeps and a warning from ATI Control Centre saying that my card is running at too high a temperature. This happens only when I'm playing a game (no matter how demanding the game is).

It's running at 81°C currently whilst playing Eve Online which is a 2 year old game, if it's neccesary I'll try and find out the temperature whilst playing Battlefield 2 but it hogs my resources so not sure if I'll be able to alt+tab out.

I'm using latest Catalysts and I've tried previous versions and Omega Drivers with no luck.

I haven't done any overclocking on my system whatsoever.

Any suggestions?

 

[Guinny]

What about the other factors like...Air flow, case temp (ambient).
Is the tower situated near a heat sorce?
Is the cabling tidy
do you have enough fans installed?

If all is well with the system why not try checking that the fan is running correctly and at the right speed using ATI tool. Also check that the heatsink on the GPU has not been knocked or come loose.
I would try re seating the heatsink or even putting an Artic cooler on with some AS5.

 

[dale1uk]

I had to change the set points for my fan to spin up faster at lower temps as at stock it only stayed at 13% until it hit 80'c. use the ati tool to check and adjust yours.

 

[Swiftan]

I have 2 additional fans, one at the front and one at the back. There's about 18 inches between the card's exhaust at the back of the case and the wall.

Cabling is pretty tidy and there's no heat source near my comp.

I'll give that ATI tool a whirl and hope for the best. Thanks for the suggestions Guinny and dale1uk, any others are most welcome just incase.

 

[Ventilated]

Hi swiftan, this is off-topic but I could really use your help. Did you buy yours from overclockers? (PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC) ) If you did would it be possible for you to take some pictures of it?

I cant seem to find any on the net!

Thanks

 

[Swiftan]

Yeah I got it from OverClockers. I don't have a digital camera but I found http://www.powercolor.com/global/images/assets/PCIE_X850_R48-TVD3/PSD/image_b_s.jpg which should be enough.

As for the overheating, the clock settings were the problem. According to ATI tool the fan was only operating at 5% speed until the temperature reached 98°C, then it was 100% speed. Before it got to 98° there was an automatic function that lowers the clock speeds when the temperature gets too high. So the fan was either 5% or 100%.

Thanks for the help again guys, much appreciated.

 

[Logsi]

Wow was at 5% , how did it get set down there.

 

[dale1uk]

Thats the preset, like I said me was 13% up to either 80 or 90'c then 100% over that which is never good!